Latest hog news
As we come into Autumn, we’re wrapping up one of our busiest wildlife monitoring seasons, which included much work on hedgehogs, and we bring you some exciting hog updates hot off the press!
All this work on our green spaces is a huge team effort, with ZSL’s London Hogwatch project, and our partners the City of London Corporation’s team of Ecologists and Rangers and Heath Hands’ staff and volunteers all getting involved in large camera surveys to monitor this iconic species.
A Heath hedgehog captured on a trail camera
Exciting news from Highgate Wood
This year marked the repeat of a 2017 hedgehog survey at Highgate Wood and Queen’s Wood - that year, only one hedgehog was recorded at Highgate Wood, but, while detailed results are still being analysed, we’ve had exciting news that hogs were captured at 19 of the 28 cameras set out at Highgate Wood this year. This is a huge success and an indication that all the hard conservation work carried out by staff and volunteers in the Wood is having the desired effect! Watch this space for the full results once all the data has been processed.
Map of camera trap hedgehog sightings at Highgate Wood 2025 (hedgehogs were captured at the cameras at the red markers, none at the blue markers)
In contrast, the survey carried out across the road at Queen’s Wood in collaboration with the Friends of Queen’s Wood found no hedgehogs on site. We’ll be collaborating with the Friends in the coming months to discuss habitat management and connectivity improvements as part of our Hedgehog Friendly Heath project.
Full results from Hampstead Heath’s 2024 survey
After lots of hard work behind the scenes form the London Hogwatch team, we now have the final report from the camera survey carried out across Hampstead Heath in 2024 (including Kenwood, the Heath Extension and Golders Hill Park). This involved setting out and collecting 150 cameras in a grid fashion across the Heath - a huge team effort involving dozens of volunteers - thanks to everyone involved!
Results are positive and the Heath’s hedgehog population is still very healthy. You can read the full report here (including sightings of lots of other animals, from rabbits to muntjac deer) and check out the cameras where most hedgehogs were seen on the map below (the larger the red dot, the more hedgehogs were sighted).
Camera trapping results on Hampstead Heath in 2024
National Hedgehog Monitoring at the Extension
Over the past three years, we’ve also been helping the London Hogwatch team with camera trapping at the Heath Extension as part of the National Hedgehog Monitoring Programme. The latest survey was in August 2025 and, once again, results are positive with lots of hedgehogs and other wildlife identified at the cameras! You can find the preliminary report on the project here.
Get involved and support our work
If you’d like to help support our hedgehog monitoring and conservation work, you can help the team from your desk by reviewing and identifying photos from the Highgate Wood survey on Zooniverse. All you need to do is create an account (so that you don’t see the same image twice) and then go follow the tutorial to go through the camera footage identifying the species caught on camera (all humans have already been edited out!).
You can also support our hedgehog-related work by adopting a hedgehog box on the Heath. This not only helps us install the boxes to help provide them with refuges if they are threatened, but also supports our wider hedgehog-related work and you’ll get an update one year down the line on what your adoption has helped support.
